And those who strive hard for Us, We will most certainly guide them in Our ways; and Allah is most surely with the doers of good. 29:69 The Quran

Mounting US Follies in the Gulf

Syed Javed Hussain

Since the fall of Baghdad in 2003 although the US is tied up rather completely bogged down in Iraq , all its regional policies, under the influence of powerful Jewish lobby at home, are Iran specific and anti- regional-peace and stability.

The US expects the fluid situation in the gulf offers a great chance to establish Israeli hegemony in the region. It is cost effective in men and material and is productive rather prolific in the long run giving huge leverage to the US over 40 percent of world oil flow.

The US policy making sphinxes, childish and immensely frivolous as they have proved to be in the last five years, have, at times, tested the patience and intelligence of their own well-wishers to make sense of their jargons on Iran.

Although the US contradictions in the Gulf are hugely unpopular at home and abroad yet this does not discourage George W. Bush and his Zionist acolytes to keep the momentum of uncertainly, depravity, slander and disparage against Iran up at a considerable risk to US National Interests.

The US has been blaming Iran for fomenting trouble in Iraq and so far has terribly failed to substantiate its claims with any evidence. Whenever international media in Iraq has demanded the proof the US officials have declined to provide documenta-tion of seized Iranian ordnance.

Off and on the US military releases photographs of other weapons finds but Iran has never been implicated in any of such catches. Prime Minister Tony Blair having the uncanny habit of repeating everything Mr Bush has said howsoever senseless it may be, has also been accusing Iran of meddling in Iraq by supplying advanced explosive devices to Iraq. British forces in the South with Iran close at hand have never been able to catch any agent or armament that could be traced back to Iran.

They themselves have accepted their failure to find anything tangible to implicate Iran . A couple of weeks ago Maj David Gell, a spokesman for British forces in Basra said, ‘We do have intelligence which suggests that weapons and ammunition are being smuggled in from Iran.

However he acknowledged that, ‘We don’t always manage to find any.’ Rather they have not found any so far even after the laps of four years. US military officials in Diyala, a rugged province along the border between Iran and Iraq , have had the same experience. They have acknowledged that no munitions or personnel have been seized at the border so far.

become an instrument in casting dark shadows over the prospect of the survival of humanity itself in this part of the globe.

The other front as corollary to the first one that the US has opened to keep pressure on Iran is its nuclear programme. Contrary to the NPT treaty whose pioneer signatory is Iran itself, the US does not want Iran to enrich uranium at home so that Iran remains dependent in some way on foreign powers namely the West regarding its Nuclear Energy Thrust.

Combining these two issues the US is trying to create a perception on Iran so that selective aerial strikes on Iran by it or by Israel in cahoots with the US can be justified even though they can never be condoned by the International Community. The US seems to be preparing for a showdown with Iran which is a major cause of concern for peace loving circles across the globe.

The US directed the USS John C. Stennis — a Nimitz-class nuclear- powered supercarrier with nine squadrons of F/A-18 Hornets, EA-6B Prowlers, S-3B Vikings, E-2C Hawkeyes and SH-60 Seahawks – on Jan.10 to head to the Persian Gulf . This would be the second US aircraft carrier joining the one already in the Gulf in the middle of February.

In addition to the deployment of the aircraft carriers the Pentagon is sending an air defence battalion equipped with Patriot missile defence systems to the region. The scary side of the scenario is that this is the first such build-up since the launch of the US-led war on Iraq in 2003. On 21st January US Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns said,” We leave all options on the table…”

The US has already started a direct war with Iran and has abducted even some of its diplomats in Iraq . It is accusing Iran of fomenting insurgency in Iraq and is blaming Iran of supplying sophisticated arms to insurgents that are proving very lethal to the US soldiers in Iraq . Of course the US has always failed to provide any tangible proof to support its claims.

It speaks from a position of authority without acknowledging that the whole world completely has lost its confidence in the veracity of the US administration.

On the oil front it is approaching banks and international consortium and threatening them of consequences if they continued to deal with Iran to bolster its oil industry. Many European banks which had accepted financing some oil industries projects have recently cancelled them. Banks are no longer granting letters of credit for delivery of some supplies. Japan is backing out of Iran oil develop-ment under US pressure.

The Government in Tehran is already facing the challenge and digging into its own reserve funds to get crucial new projects off the ground which will affect other areas of development in the long run. The US is being very mean in dealing with Iran.

It is persuading other nations to go beyond the UN mandate and tighten the notch of sanctions against Iran more severely. Any sense of justice, fair- play, respect to international law and global peace and stability are respectable to the US as long as they facilitate US hegemonic designs on targeted nations.

Although Iran ’s oil industry is not under sanctions yet the US is doing everything possible to cripple it. In the last couple of months, even before the UN limited sanc-tions were imposed on Iran , the US has been persuading international banks and oil companies to pull out of Iran and abandon dozens of projects, including develop-ment of Iran ‘s two massive new oil fields that could expand output by 800,000 barrels a day over the next four years.

Currently Iran is exporting 2.6 millions barrels oil a day. In the event of any war or US targeted strikes on Iran ’s Nuclear and Oil installations world oil prices would certainly skyrocket.

The US currently is manoeuvring to offset the impact of such eventuality in coopera-tion with OPEC members and especially, it is trying to increase Iraq ’s oil production and it is wooing Saudi Arabia carry out plans for significant increases in its production capacity. It is not the development of the region that the US is planning and endeavouring for, it is the disaster in the offing that is revealing itself piecemeal like an ancient devil of Greek mythology.

The only silver lining in the Gulf is Iran ’s close economic and political ties with China and Russia . Iran has actively been pursuing that for that last many months with tangible results. Both China and Russia now have economic interests in Iran amounting to over 40 billions US dollars. Further close cooperation with Iran gives an additional boost to Russia ’s clout in the world as Iran and Russia together sit on 50 per cent of world’s gas reserves.

Information

The US has been blaming Iran for fomenting trouble in Iraq and so far has terribly failed to substan-tiate its claims with any evidence. Whenever international media in Iraq has demanded the proof the US officials have declined to provide documenta-tion of seized Iranian ordnance.﻿